By Kimberly Hopson
L’Observateur

RESERVE – South Central Louisiana Technical College held its bi-annual career fair on Thursday afternoon for students of the college and the surrounding community.
The career fair boasted a long list of participants from more than 20 industries, local government offices and businesses. Among the participants were: Mosaic, Arcellor Mittal, St. John Housing Authority, Pellerin Millnor Corporation, ADM/ARTCO, Noranda Alumina and Valero. The companies offered employment application and interview advice along with branded knick-knacks to attendees.
“Our career fair brings local industry representatives face to face with our well trained, highly motivated student body. This allows our students to ask questions and seek opportunities from actual HR representatives of local business and industry partners, and it allows our local partners to see the caliber of potential future hires we are producing at our college,” said Judith Wright, a professor at the college.
Wright said scouring search engines and ads can be exhausting, visiting individual company websites can be time consuming. She added that once an opportunity is found, it’s almost impossible to find out whether you you are a good fit for the company in question without a contact of some sort.
  Wright said that this year’s event was as successful as last year’s fair, with more than 150 students attending. Wright hopes to draw more participants later in the year. “I think it was an awesome opportunity and had many job options. Many plants gave us some good information,” said attendee Brenda Coleman. Coleman said that she would definitely attend again if she had the chance.
  Nicole Jones has been searching for a position as a process operator and said  one of the companies that attended told her a willingness to relocate would help her find a job more quickly.   “In Louisiana, they have so many people applying, and if you were willing to relocate it would be easier to get a position,” she said. “I was getting a little discouraged, being a woman applying for an operator position. It’s so hard. Today gave me a little hope. I think (the job search) is looking much brighter.”